Quartet delivers a fourth winner

By RICHARD STORM CORRESPONDENT

Tuesday

Sep 30, 2008 at 12:01 AM

What is better than a trifecta? Four winners in a row, that's what. And that's what the Sarasota Orchestra's chamber ensembles have achieved in their monthlong series of concerts to kick off the new season in their new identity.

A well-filled Holley Hall was the setting of the final performance in the series, an interesting program of widely diverse music played with skill and energy by the Sarasota Piano Quartet: Jennifer Best, violin, Matthew Pegis, viola, Christopher Schnell, cello, and Jonathan Spivey, piano. If the execution of the demanding music was sometimes variable, the devotion to its demands was unflagging.

This is a youthful group of musicians, so it is appropriate that all the music on the program was produced by relatively young composers.

Mozart's Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor (K. 478) bursts with a fascinating mixture of playful high spirits and lyricism, particularly noteworthy in the lovely second movement, a sweetly melodic pause before the rollicking and impetuous final movement which, on this occasion, was favored with an improvisational and witty cadenza composed by Spivey.

Mark O'Connor has become famous for collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer in recordings of his modern takes on traditional American folkloric style.

Best, Pegis and Schnell presented three of these in edgy but highly rhythmic renditions. "Chief Sitting in the Rain" can only be called sophisticated country fiddling, while O'Connor's most familiar piece, "Appalachia Waltz" conveys (at considerable length) the atmosphere of a rural dance hall.

The third item in this group, "College Hornpipe," is just what the title implies, an extended and repetitious treatment of a down-home fiddle contest. These are expertly made, but their charm soon wears thin. The rather wiry tone of the ensemble, particularly the violin, did not help matters.

Richard Strauss is best known for his orchestral and operatic works. However, in his youth he worked in many other forms, eagerly assimilating the influences of his predecessors, including Mendelssohn, Brahms, Liszt and -- finally -- Wagner.

His Piano Quartet in C minor (Op. 13), written when he was 20, is a grab-bag of all those influences from which his distinctive gift for melody and harmonic progression occasionally emerges. "Over the top" is an apt description of the piece, which never pauses to draw breath except occasionally in the slow movement.

Despite some intonation and coordination problems and too much harsh tone, the quartet made a strong impact on the audience, who were caught up in the sheer audacity and energy of the performance.

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